Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

309 Vassilios Christides. The Cycle of the Arab-Byzantine Struggle in Crete... appearance. 1 Unfortunately, none of the illuminations of “the Cycle of the conquest of Crete” seem to belong to the illuminations of Western painters mentioned by Tselikas. Before starting with the description of the illuminations and their interpretation, it should be noted that the illuminations do not always coincide with the text and even the captions were written by a different scriber, who alsoworked independently anddidnot faithfully followeither the text or the content of the picture. 2 In this paper the enumeration of the figures fromSkylitzes’ manuscript follows Vasiliki Tsamakda’s order. 1 Ibid. The details about the number of the painters and their assistants in Skylitzes’ manuscript as well as their origin go beyond the scope of this article. 2 For such deviations of the text and image in general, see Leslie Brubaker, “Every Cliché in the Book. The Linguistic Turn and the Text-Image. Discourse in Byzantine Manuscripts”, in Liz James, ed., Art and Text in Byzantine Cul- ture , Cambridge, et al., 2007, p. 59: “Miniatures in manuscripts are normally tied to a particular text, yet they almost always incorporate elements that the Byzantines knew about from other sources entirely.” Fig. I. Blemmyes’ (Nubians) attack on the monasteries of Sinai